 25 The Abyssinian Prince Snow qualmy past lies among mountains prickly with rocks and burnt stumps, but the road is velvet, with broad saucer curves. And to melt it was pure beauty, it was release from life. To soar up coaxing inclines and slip down easy grades in the powerful car. No more teals for me, he cried, and the ecstasy of handling an engine that slowed to a demure whisper then, at a touch of the accelerator, floated up a rise, effortless, joyous, humming the booming song of the joy in speed. He suddenly hated the bucking tediousness of the teal. The Gomez depth symbolized his own new life. So he came to Lake Washington, and just across it was the city of his long dreams, the city of the Pacific, and of Clair. There was no ferry in sight, and he rounded the lake, struck a brick pavement, rolled through rough woods, suburban villas, and petty business streets, to a region of factories and mills with the funnels of the ships beyond. And every minute he drove more slowly and became more uneasy. The pavement, the miles of it, the ruthless lumber mills with their thousands of workmen quite like himself. The agitation of realizing that every three minutes he was passing a settlement larger than Shoe and Strom. The strangeness of ships and all the cynical ways of the sea, the whole scene depressed him as he perceived how little of the world he knew and how big and contemptuous of milk daggers that world must be. Huh, he growled. Like some folks living here, don't suppose they spend such a whale of a lot of time thinking about milk dagget and Bill McGullway and Prof Jones. I guess most of these people wouldn't think Heine Raskookle's store was so gosh-offle-big. I wasn't scared of Minneapolis much, but there they didn't ring in mountains and an ocean on you, and I didn't have to go up on the hill and meet folks like Clair's relations and figure out whether you shake hands, catch as catch can, or Corinthian. Look at that sawmill, chimney. Isn't it nice of them to put the fly screen over it so the flies won't get down into the flames? No, they haven't got much more than a million feet of lumber in that one pile. And here's a bum little furniture store. It wouldn't cost more than about ten times all I've got to buy one of those Morris chairs. Oh gosh, won't those houses ever stop? Say that must be a jitney. The driver snickered at me. Will the whole town be on to me? Milt, you're a kind fellow, and you know what's the matter with Heine's differential, but they don't need you here. Quite a few folks to carry on the business. Gosh, look at that building. They had nine stories. He had planned to stop at a hotel to wash up and to gallop to Clair, but, well, wouldn't it maybe be better to leave the car at a public garage so the boatwoods could get it when they wanted to? He'd better just kind of look around before he tackled the watchdog. It was the public garage which finally crushed him. It was a garage of enameled brick and colored tiles with a plate, glass, and closed office in which worked young men clad as the angels. One of them wore a carnation, Milt noted. Huh, I'll write back and tell Ben Sicka that here after he's to wear his best Sunday go-to-meeting clothes and a milkweed blossom when he comes down to work at the red trail garage, Milt drove up the brick incline into a room thousands of miles long with millions of new and recently polished cars standing in lines as straight as a running board. He begged of a high-nosed colored functionary, not in khaki overalls, but in maroon livery. Where'll I put this boat? The Abyssinian Prince gave him a cheek and in a tone of extreme lack of personal interest snapped, take it down the aisle to the elevator. Milt had followed the natural lines of traffic into the city. He had spoken to no one. The Princess Snort was his welcome to Seattle. Meekly he drove past cars so ebb and silvery, so smug and strong, that they would have regarded a teal-bug as an insult. Another attendant waved him into the elevator and Milt tried not to look surprised when the car started, not forward, but upward, as though it had turned into an airplane. When these adventures were over, when he had had a shave and a shine and washed his hands and looked into a department store window that contained ten billion yards of silt draped against polished satin wood, when he had felt unhappy over a movie theater large enough to contain ten times the population of show-and-strum, and had been cursed by a policeman for jaywalking and had passed a hotel entirely full of diplomats and marble and caviar, then he could no longer put off telephoning to Claire and humbly. In a booth meant for an umbrella stand, he got the Eugene Gilson house, and to a female who said, yes, in a tone which made it mean no, he ventured, may I speak to Ms. Boltwood? Ms. Boltwood, it seemed, was out. He was not sorry, he was relieved. He ducked out of the telephone booth with a sensation of escape. Milt was in love with Claire. She was to him the purpose of life. He thought of her deeply and tenderly and longingly. All the way into Seattle he had brooded about her, remembered her every word and gesture, recalled the curve of her chin and the fresh feeling of her hands. But Claire had suddenly become too big. In her were all these stores, these office buildings for clever lawyers and surgeons, these contemptuous trolley cars, these careless people and beautiful clothes. They were too much for him. Desperately he was pushing them back, back fighting for breath, and she belonged with them. He mailed the check for the stored car to her with a note, written standing before a hacked wall desk in a branch post office, which said only, here's the check for the boat, did not know whether you would have room for it at the house, tried to get you on phone, phone again just as soon as rent room, etc., hope having happy time, MD. He went out to the university. On the trolley he relaxed, but he did not exultantly feel that he had won to the Pacific. He could not regard Seattle now as a magic city, the Baghdad of modern caravans, with Alaska and the Orient on one hand, the forest to the north and eastward, the spacious inland empire of the wheat. He saw it as a place where you had to work hard just to live, where busy policemen despised you because you didn't know which trolley to take, where it was incredibly hard to remember even the names of the unceasing streets, where the conductors said, step lively, and there was no room to whistle, no time to swap stories with a Bill McAllaway at an old-home lunch counter. He found the university, he talked with the authorities about entering the engineering school, the YMCA gave him a list of rooms, and because it was cheap, he chose a cubbyhole and a flat over a candy store, a low room which would probably keep out the rain but had no other virtues. It had one bed, one table, one dissipated bureau, two straight-back chairs, and one venerable lithograph depicting a girl with ringlets shaking her irritating forefinger at a high church kitten. The lady consented to his importing an oil stove for cooking his meals. He bought the stove with a box of oatmeal, a jar of bacon, and half a dozen eggs. He bought a plain and solid geometry and an algebra. At dinner time he laid the algebra beside his plate of anemic bacon and leaking eggs. The eggs grew cold. He did not stir. He was reviewing his high school algebra. He went down the pages word by word, steadily, quickly, absolutely concentrated, as concentrated as he would recently have been in a new problem of disordered transmission. Not once did he stop to consider how glorious it would be to marry Claire or how terrifying it would be to marry Miss Boltwood. Three hours went by before he started up bewildered, rubbed his eyes, picked at the chilled bacon and altogether disgusting eggs and rambled out into the street. Again he risked the scorn of conductors and jitney drivers. He found Queen Anne Hill, found the residence of Mr. Eugene Gilson. He sneaked about it, slipped into the gate, prowled toward the house, flabby from the intensity of study he longed for the stimulus of Claire's smile. But as he stared up at the great squares of the clear windows at the flare of white columns in the porch lights, that smile seemed unreachable. He felt like a rustic at court. From the shelter of the prickly holly hedge he watched the house. It was some kind of a party, or what would folks like these call a party? Limousines were arriving. He had a glimpse of silken ankles, frothy underskirts, heard easy laughter, saw people moving through a big blue and silver room, caught a drifting tremor of music. At last he saw Claire. She was dancing with a young man as decorative as that confounded Saxton fellow he had met at Flathead Lake. But younger than Saxton, a laughing young man with curly black hair. For the first time in his life, Milt wanted to kill. He muttered, Damn, damn, damn! As he saw the young man carelessly embracing Claire. His fingers tingling, his whole body yearning till every cell seemed a beating hammer. Milt longed just once to slip his hand about Claire's waist like that. He could feel the satin of her bodice and its warmth. Then it seemed to him, as Claire passed the window, that he did not know her at all. He had once talked to a girl who resembled her, but that was long ago. He could understand a Gomez dep and appreciate a brisk sports suit, but this girl was of a world unintelligible to him. Her hair, in its dips and convolutions, was all together a puzzle. How did she ever fix it like that? Her low evening dress, what was it made of? Some white stuff, but was it silk or muslin or what? Her shoulders were startling in their bare, powdery smoothness. How dare that young pup dance with her? And her face, that had seemed so jolly and friendly, floated past the window as pale and elusive as a wisp of fog. His longing for her passed into clumsy awe. He remembered, without resentment, that once, on a hilltop in Dakota, she had coldly forbidden him to follow her. With all the pleasure of martyrdom, to make quite sure that he should realize how complete a fool he had been to intrude on Ms. Boltwood, he studied the other guests. He gave them, perhaps, a glory they did not have. There were girls sleek as ivory. There was a lean, stooped man, very distinguished. There was a bulky man in a dinner coat with a semicircle of mustache and eyes that, even at a distance, seemed to give impatient orders. He would be a big banker or a lumberman. It was the easy friendliness of all of them that most made milk feel like an outsider. If a servant had come out and ordered him away, he would have gone meekly. He fancied. He struggled off too solidly unhappy to think how unhappy he was. In his clammy room, he picked up the algebra. For a quarter hour, he could not gather enough vigor to open it. In his lassitude, his elbows felt feeble. His fingers were ready to drop off. He slowly scratched the book open. At one o'clock, he was reading algebra, his face still and grim, but already it seemed less hardly brick-red. He listlessly telephoned to Claire in the morning. Hello? Oh, Ms. Boltwood? This is Milt Daggett. Oh, oh, how are you? Why? Why, I've got settled. I can get into the engineering school, all right. I'm glad. Enjoying Seattle? Oh, oh, yes. The mountains. Do you like it? Oh, yes. Seein' all. Great town. Uh, when are we going to see you? Daddy had to go east, left you his regards. When? Well, I suppose you're awfully busy meeting people and all. Yes, I am, rather, but her hedging, uncomfortable tone changed to a cry of distress. Milt, I must see you come up at four this afternoon. Yes. He rushed to a small, hot tailor shop. He panted, press my suit while I wait. They gave him a pair of temporary trousers, an undesirable pair of trousers belonging to a short, fat man with no taste in fabrics. And with these flapping about his lean legs, he sat behind a calico curtain reading The War Cry and looking at a fashion plate depicting nine gentlemen, yachtmen, each nine feet tall while the Yugoslav in charge unfeelingly sprinkled and ironed and padded his suit. He spent 10 minutes in blackening his shoes in his room and 20 minutes in getting the blacking off his fingers. He was walking through the gate in the gilsen hedge at one minute to four, but he had reached Queen Anne Hill at three. For an hour he had walked the crest road, staring at the steamers below, alternately gripping his hands with a desire of prayer, and timorously finally deciding that he wouldn't go to her house, wouldn't ever see her again. He came into the hall tremblingly expecting some great thing, some rending scene, and she met him with a cool, oh, this is nice. We've had some little white cakes made for us. He felt like a man who has asked for a drink of cold charged water and found it warm and flat. How? Dandy house, he muttered, limply shaking her limp hand. Yes, isn't it a darling? They do themselves awfully well here. I'm afraid you're bluff, plain, democratic Westerners are a fraud. I hear a lot more about society here than I ever did in the East. The sets seemed frightfully complicated. She was drifting into the drawing room to a tapestry stool, and Milt was awkwardly stalking a large wing chair while she fidgeted. Everybody tells me about how one poor dear soul, a charming lady who used to take in washing or salt gold mines or something, and she came here a little while ago with billions and billions of dollars and tried to buy her way in by shopping for all the charities in town, and apparently she's just as out of it here as she would be in London. You and I aren't exclusive like that, are we? Somehow, her you and I was too kindly, as though she was trying to put him at ease, as though she knew he couldn't possibly be at ease. With a horribly elaborate politeness, with a smile that felt hot on his twitching cheeks, he murmured, oh no, no, we, no, I guess. If he knew what it was he guessed, he couldn't get it out. While he was trying to find out what had become of all the things there were to say in the world, a maid came in with an astonishing object, a small red shell table on wheels, laden with silver vessels and cake and sandwiches that were amazingly small and thin. The maid was so starched that she creaked. She glanced at milk, Claire didn't make him so nervous that he thought of his clothes, but the maid did. He was certain that she knew that he had blacked his own shoes, knew how old were his clothes. He was urging himself, must get new suit tomorrow, ready-made, mustn't forget them. Now, be sure, get suit tomorrow. He wanted to apologize to the maid for existing. He wouldn't dare to fall in love with the maid, and he'd kill the man who said that he could be fool enough to fall in love with Ms. Boltwood. He sipped his tea and dropped sandwich crumbs and ached and panted and peeped at the crushing quantities of pictures and sconces and tables and chairs in the room and wondered what they did with all of them, while Claire chattered, Yes, we were an exclusive out on the road. Didn't we meet funny people, though? Oh, somehow that funny people sounds familiar. But what fun that morning was it? Pelago was it? Heavens, I'm forgetting those beastly little towns already. That place where we hazed the poor landlady who overcharged me. Yes, he was thinking about how much Claire would forget now. Yes, we certainly fixed her all right. Did you get the stories checked for your car? Oh, yes, thank you. So nice of you to bother with it. Oh, nothing at all, nothing, nothing at all. Do you like Seattle? Oh, yes, such views, the mountains. Do you like it? Oh, yes, always wanted to see the sea. Yes, and such a well built town. Yes, and they must do a lot of business here. Yes, they. Oh, yes, I do like Seattle. He had darted from his chair, brushed by the T-wagon, ignoring its rattle and perilous tipping of cups. He put his hand on her shoulder, snorted, look here, we're both sparring for time. Stop it, it's all right, Claire. I want you to like me, but I'm not like that woman you were telling about this trying to butt in. I know, Lord, I know so well what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm not up to the people you've been seeing last couple of days, not up to him yet, anyway. Well, we'll be good friends. Fearless now, his awe gone in tenderness. He lifted her chin, looked straight into her eyes, smiled. But his courage was slipping. He wanted to run and hide. He turned abruptly, grumbling, well, better get back to work now, I guess. Her cry was hungry. Oh, please don't go. She was beside him, shyly picking at his sleeve. I know what you mean. I like you for being so understanding, but I do like you. You were the perfect companion. Let's, oh, let's have a walk and try to laugh again. He definitely did not want to stay. At this moment, he did not love her. He regarded her as an estimable young woman who, for a person so idiotically reared, had really shown a good deal of pluck out on the road where he wanted to be. He stood in the hall, disliking his old cap while she ran up to put on a top coat. Mute, casual. They tramped out of the house together and down the hill to a region of shabby old brown houses like blisters on the hillside. They had little to say, and that little was a polite reminiscence of incidents in which neither was interested. When they came back to the gilson hedge, he stopped at the gate with terrific respectableness, removed his hat. Good night, she said cheerfully. Call me up again soon. He did not answer, good night. He said, goodbye. And he meant it to be his last farewell. He caught her hand, hastily dropped it, fled down the hill. He was, he told himself, going to leave Seattle that evening. That, doubtless, is the reason why he ran to a trolley to get to a department store before it closed and why, precipitating himself upon a startled clerk, he purchased a new suit of chased blue surge, a new pair of tan boots, curiously like some he had seen on the university campus that morning, and a new hat so gray and conservative and felty that it might have been worn by Woodrow Wilson. He spent the evening in reading algebra and geometry and in telling himself that he was beautifully not thinking about Claire. In the midst of it, he caught himself at it and laughed. What you're doing, my friend, is pretending you don't like Claire so that you can hide from your fool self the fact that you're going to sneak back to see her first chance you get. First time the watchdog is out. Seriously now, son, Claire is impossible for you. No can do. Now that you've been chomping up to leave home. Oh, Lord, I wish I hadn't promised to take this room for all winter. Wish I hadn't matriculated at the U, but I'm here now and I'll stick it out. I'll stay here one year anyway and go back home. Oh, and to my colleague, she liked me. He was thinking of the wild rose teacher to whom he had given a lift back in Dakota. He was remembering her daintiness, her admiration. Now, there's somebody who'd make me keep climbing but wouldn't think I was a poor hick. If I were to drive back next spring, I could find her. End of chapter 25, chapter 26 of Free Air. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Free Air by Sinclair Lewis, chapter 26, a class in engineering and omelets. The one thing of which Milt Baggett was certain was that now he had managed to crawl into the engineering school, he must get his degree in mechanical engineering. He was older than most of his classmates. He must hurry. He must do four years' work in two. There has never been a freshman, not the most goggle-eyed and earnest of them who has seen less of classmates, thought less about outside activities, more grimly centered the universe about his work. Milt had sold his garage by mail to Ben Sitka and Heine Raskookle. He had enough money to get through two years with economy. His life was as simple and dull as it had been in Sean Strom. He studied while he cooked his scrappy meals, he pinned mathematical formula and mechanical diagrams on the wall and poured over them while he was dressing. Or while he was trying to break in the new shoes, which were beautiful, squeaky, and confoundedly tight. He was taking French and English and composition writing in addition to engineering and he made out a schedule of life as humorlessly as a girl grind who intends to be a Latin teacher. When it was not at work or furiously running and yanking chest weights in the gymnasium, he was attending concerts, lectures. Studying the life about him, he had discovered that the best way to save time was to avoid the lazy friendships of college, the pipe smoking, yawning, comfortable, rather heavy, altogether pleasant wondering about what will we do next, which occupies at least four hours a day for the average man in college. He would have liked it as he had liked long talks about nothing with Bill McAulay at the old home lunch, but he couldn't afford it. He had to be ready to, that was the point at which his reflections always came up with a jolt. He was quite clear about the method of getting ready, but he hadn't the slightest idea of what he was getting ready for. The moment he had re-decided to marry Claire, he saw that his only possible future would be celibate machinery installing in Alaska. And the moment he was content with the prospect of an engineer's camp in the Alaskan wilds, his thoughts went crazily fluttering after Claire. Despite his aloofness, Milt was not unpopular in his class. The engineers had few of them. The interest in dances, athletics, college journalism, which distinguished men in the academic course. They were older and more conscious of a living to earn. And Milt's cheerful, how's the boy? His manner of waving his hand, as though to a good customer leaving the red trail garage with the generator at last tamed, indicated that he was a good fellow. One group of collegians Milt did seek. It is true that he had been genuine in scorning social climbers, but it is also true that the man whom he sought to know were the university smart set. Their satisfaction in his allegiance would have been lessened, however, had they known how little he cared for what they thought of him. And with what cruel directness he was using them as models for the one purpose of pleasing Miss Claire Boltwood. The American state universities admit, in a pleased way, that though Yale and Harvard and Princeton may be snobbish, the state universities are the refuge of a myth called college democracy. But there is no university near a considerable city into which the inheritors of the wealth of that city do not carry all the local social distractions. Their family rank, their place in the unwritten peerage determines to which fraternity they shall be elected and the fraternity determines with whom, men and girls, they shall be intimate. The sons and daughters of Seattle and Tacoma, the sions of old families running in an unbroken line clear back to 1880, were amiable to poor outsiders from the Yakima Valley and the new claims of Idaho, but they did not often invite them to their homes on the two hills and the boulevard. Yet it was these plutocrats whom Milt followed, they whose boots and table manners, cigarettes and lack of interest in theology he studied. He met them in his English class. He remarked, hello Smith and morning Jones, as though he liked them, but didn't care a hang whether they liked him. And by and by he drifted into their fraternity dwelling house with a question about the next day's assignment and met their friends. He sat pipe smoking silent, cheerful and they seemed to accept him. Whenever one of them felt that Milt was intruding and asked impertinent questions in the manner of a Pullman porter at a dark town ball, Milt had a peculiar level look which had been known to generate courtesy even in the offspring of a million dollars. They found that he knew more about motorcars than any of them. And as motorcars were among their greater gods, they considered him wise. He was incomparably simple and unpretentious. They found his presence comfortable, but there is a question as to what they would have thought had they known that, lying awake in the morning, Milt unsmilingly repeated, hair always straight down at the back, never rounded, nicks on clippers over the ears. Matisse is a popular nut artist, fashionable for the swells to laugh at him and the fellows on the college papers to rave about him. Blinks and Severin, the swellest, the smartest haberdashery in the city. The one way to get in Dutch is to mention labor leaders. Never say pleased to meet you, just look about halfway between bored and tolerable and say, how do you do? All these first three weeks of his life in Seattle, he had seen Claire only on his first call. Twice he had telephoned to her. On one of these high occasions, she had invited him to accompany the family to the theater, which meant the movies. And he had wretchedly refused. The other time she had said that she might stay in Seattle all winter and she might go any day. And they must be sure to have that good long walk. And he had said, oh yes, 10 or 12 unhappy times and had felt very empty as he hung up the receiver. Then she wrote to invite him to late Sunday breakfast at the Gilsons. They made a function of it and called it Brunchen. The hour was given at 1030. Most people came at noon, but Milt arrived at 1031 and found only a sleepy butler in sight. He waited in the drawing room for five minutes, feeling like a bill collector. Into the room vaulted a medium sized, medium looking, amiable man, Eugene Gilson babbling, oh I say, so sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Daggett, rotten shame. Do come have a bun or something, frightfully informal these Brunchen's, play auction. It's all right, no, said Milt. The host profusely led him to a dining room where, in English fashion, or something like English fashion, or anyway a close approximation to the fictional pictures of English fashion, kidneys and sausages and omelets weighted in dishes on the sideboard. Mr. Gilson poured coffee and chanted, do try the kidneys, they're usually very fair. Ms. Boltwood tells me that you were very good to her on the trip, must have been jolly trip. You going to be in town sometime? Oh yes, Claire said you were in the university, engineering, wasn't it? Have you ever seen our lumber mills? Do drop around some. Try the omelet before the beastly thing gets cold. Do you mind kicking that button? We'll have some more omelet in any time at the mill and I'll be glad to have someone show you through. How did you find the roads along the red trail? Why, pretty fair, said Milt. Into the room precipitated Mrs. Gilson in a smile, a super sweater and a sports skirt that would have been soiled by any variety of sport more violent than P. Knuckle and she was wailing as she came. We're disgraced. Gene, is this Mr. Daggett? How do you do so good of you to come? Do try the kidneys, they're usually quite decent. Are the omelets warm? You might ring for some more. Gene, for heaven's sake, give me some coffee. This boltwood will be right down, Mr. Daggett. She told us how fortunate they were that they met you on the road. Did you like the trip? How were the roads? Why, they were pretty good, said Milt. Claire arrived, fresh and serene and white taffeta and she cried prettily. I ought to have known that you'd be prompt even if no one else in the world is. So glad you came. Have you tried the kidneys and do heaven? Oh, I see you have tried the omelets. How goes the work at the university? Why, fine, said Milt. He ate stolidly and looked pleased and sneak in a glance at his new and still tight and squeaky, tan boots to make sure they were as well polished as they had seemed at home. From nowhere appeared a bustling, weighty woman purring. Hello, hello, hello, is it possible that you're all up? Mr. Daggett, yes, do lead me to the kidneys. And a man with gray hair of a grandfather and the giggle of a cash girl bounced in clamoring. Morning, expected to have brunch and alone. Do we have some bridge? Oh, good morning, Mr. Daggett, how do you like Seattle? Oh, thanks so much, yes, just two. Then Milt ceased to keep track of the conversation which bubbled over the omelets and stewed over the kidneys and foamed over the coffee and clashed above a hastily erected bridge table. And altogether sounded curiously like four cars with four quite different things to matter with them all being tried out at once at a small garage. People flocked in and nodded as though they knew one another too well to worry about it. They bowed to him charmingly and instantly forgot him for the kidneys and sausages. He sat looking respectable and feeling lonely by a cup of coffee till Claire, dropping the highly unreal smile with which she had been listening to the elderly beau's account of the fishing trip he hadn't quite gone around to taking, slipped into a chair beside him and begged, are they looking out for you, Milt? Oh, yes, thank you. You haven't been to see me. Oh, no, but working so darn hard. What a strikingly original reason, but have you really honest? Suddenly he wanted the eternal man for ever playing confidential small boy to the beloved to tell her about his classes and acquaintances, to get pity for his bare room in his home cooking. But round them blared the brazen interest in kidneys and as Claire glanced up with much brightness at another arrival, Milt lost momentum and found that there was absolutely nothing in the world he could say to her. He made a grateful farewell to the omelets and kidneys and escaped. He walked many miles that day trying to remember how Claire looked. End of chapter 26. Chapter 27 of Free Air. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Free Air by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 27, The Viciousness of Nice Things. What did you think of my nice dagget boy? Claire demanded of Eva Gelson. The moment Bruncheon was over. Which one was? Oh, the boy you met on the road. Why, really, I didn't notice in particularly. I'd rather fancied from the way you referred to him that he was awfully jolly and forceful, but rather crude. But I didn't notice him at all. He seemed perfectly well-bred, but slightly heavy. No, he isn't that. He, why did you lead spades, reflected Claire. They were in the drawing room resting after the tacked and tumult of the Bruncheon. Claire had been here long enough now for the gilsons to forget her comfortably and to be affectionate and quarrelsome and natural and to admit by their worrying that even in their exalted social position there were things to fuss about. I do think we ought to have invited Belle Torrin's fretted Mrs. Gilson. We've simply got to have her here soon. Mr. Gilson speculated intensely, but she's the dullest soul on earth and her husband spends all his spare time in trying to think up ways of doing meat dirt in business. Oh, by the way, did you get the water tap in the blue room fix? It's dripping all the time. No, I forgot it. Well, I do wish you'd have it attended to. It simply drips all the time. I know I intended to phone the plumber. Can't you phone him tomorrow from the office? No, I have a time to bother with it, but I do wish you would. It keeps on dripping. I know it doesn't seem to stop. Well, you remind me of it in the morning. I'm afraid I'll forget. You'd better make a note of it. If it keeps on dripping that way, it's likely to injure something. And I do wish you'd tell the Jap not to put so much parsley in the omelet. And I say, how would an omelet be with butter sauce over it? Oh no, I don't think so. An omelet ought to be nice and dry. Butter makes it so greasy. Besides, with the price of butter, but there's a richness to butter. You'd better make a note about the tap dripping in the blue room right now before you forget it. Oh, why in heaven's name did we have Johnny Martin here? He's dull as ditch water. I know, but it's nice to go out to his place on the point. Oh Jean, I do wish you'd try to remember not to talk about your business so much. You and Mr. Martin were talking about the price of lumber for at least half an hour. Nothing of the kind. We scarcely mentioned it. Oh, what car are you going to use this afternoon? If we get out to the Barnettes, I thought we might use the limousine. Or no, you'll probably go out before I do. I have to read over some specifications and I promise to give Will a lift. Couldn't you take the loco? Maybe you might drive yourself. No, I forgot. The clutch is slipping a little well. You might drive out and send the car back for me. Still, there wouldn't hardly be time. Listening to them as to a play, Claire suddenly desired to scream, oh, for heaven's sake, quit fussing. I'm going up and drown myself in the blue room tap. What does it matter? Walk, take a surface car. Don't fuss so. Her wrath came from her feeling of guilt. Yes, Milt had been commonplace. Had she done this to him? Had she turned his cheerful ignorance into careful stupor? And she felt stuffy and choking and overpacked with food. She wanted to be out on the road, clear-headed, forcing her way through an independent human being with Milt not too far behind. Mrs. Gilson was droning. I do think Maddie Benson is so nice. Rather dull, I'd call her, yawned, Mr. Gilson. Maddie was the seventh of their recent guests, whom he had called dull by now. Not at all. Oh, of course, she doesn't dance on tables and quote Materlink, but she does have an instinct for the niceties and the proprieties. Her little house is so sweet, everything just exactly right. It may be only a single rose, but always chosen so carefully to melt into the background. And such adorable china. I simply die of envy every time I see her lost off plates and such a quiet way of reproving any bad taste. The time that crank university professor was out there and spoke of the radical labor movement, and Maddie just smiled at him and said, if you don't mind, let's not drag filthy lumberjacks into the drawing room. They'd hate it just as much as we would, don't you think, perhaps? Oh, damn nice china. Oh, let's hang all spinsters who are brightly reproving. Claire was silently raging and particularly and earnestly confound all nicety and discretion of living. She tried to break the spell of a gilsons fussing. She falseheartedly fallen upon Mr. Gilson and inquired, is there anything very exciting going on at the mills, Jean? Exciting? Asked Mr. Gilson incredulously. Why, how do you mean? Don't you find business exciting? Why do you do it then? Oh, well, of course. Oh, yes, exciting in a way. Well, well, we've had a jolly interesting time making staves for candy pails. Promises to be wonderfully profitable. We have a new way of cutting them, but you wouldn't be interested in the machinery. Of course not. You don't bore Eva with your horrid head aching business problems, do you? Claire cooed with low cunning. Indeed, no, don't think a chap ought to inflict his business on his wife. The home should be a place of peace. Yes, said Claire. But she wasn't thinking, yes. She was thinking, Milt, what worries me now isn't how I can risk letting the nice people meet you. It's how I can ever waste you on the nice people. Oh, I'm spoiled for cut glass and velvet afternoons. Eternal spiritual agony over blue room taps is too high a price. Even for four poster beds, I want to be driving, hiking, living. That afternoon, after having agreed that Mr. Johnny Martin was a boar, Mr. and Mrs. Gilson decided to run out to the house of Mr. Johnny Martin. They bore along the lifeless Claire. Mr. Martin was an un-entertaining bachelor who entertained. There were a dozen supercilious young married people at his Bayside Cottage when the Gilson's arrived. Among them were two eyebrow-arching young matrons whom Claire had not met. Mrs. Corey and Mrs. Betts. We've all heard of you, Ms. Bultwood, said Mrs. Betts. You come from the East, don't you? Yes, fluttered Claire, trying to be cordial. Mrs. Corey and Mrs. Betts looked at each other in a motionless wink and Mrs. Corey prodded. From New York? No, Brooklyn. Claire tried not to make it too short. Oh, the tacit wink was repeated. Mrs. Corey said brightly, much too brightly. I was born in New York. I wonder if you know the doodanauts. Now, Claire knew the doodanauts. She had danced with that young ass Don doodana a dozen times, but the devil did enter into her and possess her. And to Eva Gilson's horror, Claire said stupidly, no, but I think I've heard of them. The condemning wink was repeated. I hear you've been doing such interesting things, motoring and adventuring. You must have met some terrible people along the way, fished Mrs. Betts. Yes, everybody does seem to feel that way, but I'm afraid I found them terribly nice, flared Claire. I always say that common people can be most agreeable, Mrs. Corey patronized. Before Claire could kill her, there wasn't any homicidal weapon inside except a silver tea strainer. Mrs. Corey had pirouetted on, though I do think we're much too kind to workmen and all, the labor situation is getting to be abominable around here in the West. And upon my word to keep a maid nowadays, you have to treat her as though she were a countess. Why shouldn't maids be like countesses? They're much more important, said Claire, sweetly. It cannot be stated that Claire had spent any large part of her time in reading Karl Marx, leading syndicalist demonstrations or hemming red international flags, but at this instant she was a complete revolutionist. She could have executed Mrs. Corey and pretty Mrs. Betts with zeal. She disliked the entire bourgeoisie. She looked around for a jackboy to call comrade and she again thought about the possibilities of the tea strainer for use in assassination. She stolidly wore through the combined and exclamatory explanations of Mrs. Corey, Mrs. Betts, Mrs. Gilson and Mr. Johnny Martin about the inherent viciousness of all maids and when the storm was over, she said in a manner of honey and syrup, you were speaking of the Deutonants, weren't you, Mrs. Corey? I do remember them now. Poor Don Deutonant, isn't it a pity such a fool? His father is really a very decent old bore. I, observed Mrs. Corey in prim horror, regard the Deutonants as extremely delightful people. I fancy we must be thinking of different families. I mean the Manhattan Deutonants, not the Brooklyn family. Oh yes, I meant the Manhattan family too, the one that made its money selling shoddy willings in the Civil War, caressed Claire. Right there, her welcome by Mrs. Corey and Mrs. Betts ceased. And without any of the unhappiness which the thought would have caused her three months before, Claire reflected, how they hate me. The Gilson's had a number of thoughts upon the subject of tact to express to Claire on the way home, but she, who had always smiled, who had been the obedient guest, shrugged and snapped. They're idiots, those young women. They're impertinent shop girls and good frocks. I like your Seattle, it's a glorious city. And I love so many of the fine, simple real people I've met here. I admire your progress. I do know how miraculously you've changed it from a mining camp. But for heaven's sake, don't forget the good common hardiness of the miners. Somehow, London social distinction seemed ludicrous in American cities that 20 years ago didn't have much, but bored sidewalks and saloons. I don't care whether it's Seattle or Minneapolis or Omaha or Denver. I refuse to worry about the Duchess of Corey and the Baroness Betts and all the other wonderful imitations of guilt. When a pair of finishing school flappers like Betts and Corey try to impress me with their superiority to workmen and their extreme aristocracy and Easterness, they make me tired. I am the East. She had made peace with the gilsons by night. She had been reasonably repentant about not playing the game of her host. But inside her eager heart, she snuggled a warm thought. She remembered how gaily she had once promised out on the road to come to Milt's room and cook for him. She thought of it with homesick desire. His room probably wasn't particularly decorative and she doubted his having an electric range, but it would be fun to fry eggs again to see him fumbling with the dish washing, to chatter and plan golden futures and not worry about the opinions of Mrs. Corey and Mrs. Betts. The next afternoon, the limousine was not busy and she borrowed it with the handsome Greek chauffeur. She gave him an address not far from the university. He complained, pardon me, miss, but I think you have the wrong number. That block is a low quarter. Probably, but that's the right number. He raised his Athenian eyebrows and she realized what a mistake she had made in not bringing the lethal tea strainer along. When they had stopped in front of a cheap candy store, he opened the door of the car with such frigid reserve that she thought seriously about slapping him. She climbed the stingy flapping stairs and knocked at the first door in the upper hall. It was opened by a large apron to which a sleepy woman was an unimportant attachment and out of the mass of apron and woman came a yawning. Mr. Daggett's room is down the hall on the right. Claire knocked at a door which had, at various epochs, been blue, yellow, and pink, and that was all three. No answer. She tried the knob, went in. She could not tell whether it was the barrenness of the room or Milt's carefulness which caught her. The uncarpeted boards of the floor were well swept. He had only one plate, one spoon, but they were scoured and put away on newspaper-covered shelves in a cupboard made of a soap box. Behind a calico curtain was his new suit, dismayingly neat on its hanger. On the edge of the iron sink, primally washed and spread out to dry, was a tattered old rag. At the side of it, at the thought of Milt's solemnly washing dishes, the tears began to creep to her eyes. There was but one picture in the room. A half-tone of a girl clipped from a magazine devoted to actresses. The name was cut off. As she wondered at it, Claire saw that the actress was very much like herself. The only other ornament was a paper mache figure of a cat, a cat reminiscent of the Lady Verdevere. Claire picked it up. On the bottom was the price mark, three cents. It was the price mark that pierced her. She flung across the room, dropped on his creaky cot bed and howled, oh, I've been a beast, a beast, a beast. All the pretty things, limousines and marble baths, thinking so much of them and not wanting them for him, and he was so little, with just nothing. He that would appreciate jolly things so much here in this den and making it as tolerable as he can, and me half ashamed of him instead of fighting for him, I belong with Cory and Betts. Oh, I'm so ashamed, so bitterly ashamed. She padded his bed smooth with nervous eager fingers. She scraped a pinpoint of egg yolk off a platter. Before she had been home five minutes, she had written a note asking him to tea for next day. End of chapter 27. Chapter 28 of Free Air. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Free Air by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 28, The Morning Coat of Mr. Hudson B. Riggs. Mr. Hudson B. Riggs now enters the tale, somewhat tardily, and making a quick exit all in a morning coat too tight about the shoulders and a smile of festivity too tight about the lips. He looked as improbable as an undertaker's rubber plant, yet in his brief course he had a mighty effect upon the progress of civilization as exemplified in the social career of Mr. Milton Daggett. Mr. Riggs had arrived at a golden position in Alaskan mining engineering by way of the farm, the section gang, the surveyor's chain, and prospecting, and his thick hands showed his evolution. His purpose in life was to please Mrs. Riggs, and he wasn't ever going to achieve his purpose in life. She wore spangles and her corsets creaked, and she smiled nervously and could tell in a glance quicker than the 1-100 Kodak shutter whether or not a new acquaintance was worth cultivating. She had made Mr. Riggs thoroughly safe and thoroughly unhappy in the pursuit of society. He stood about keeping from doing anything he might want to, and he was profusely polite to young cubs whom he longed to have in his office so that he could get even with them. What Mr. Riggs wanted to do at the third large tea given by Mrs. Gilson from Ms. Claire Boltwood was to sneak out on the sun porch and play over the new records on the phonograph. But the things he had heard from Mrs. Riggs, the last time he'd done that, had convinced him that it was not a wise method of escape. So he stood by the fireplace, safe on one side at least, and ate lettuce sandwiches, which he privately called cow feed. And listened to a shining, largely feminine crowd rapidly uttering unintelligible epigrams from which he caught only the words, ripping hand, train nurse, whip cord, really worth seeing, lost the ball near the second hole, most absurd person, new maid. Thanks so much. He was hoping that someone would come around and let him be agreeable. He knew that he stood the ride home with Mrs. Riggs much better after he had been agreeable to people he didn't like. What Mr. Riggs did not know was that a young man in uninteresting blue who looked like a good tennis player was watching him. It wasn't because he detected a fellow soul in Purgatory, but because he always was obsequious outside of his office that Mr. Riggs bowed so profusely that he almost lost his teacup when the young man in blue drifted to him and suggested, I hear you're in the Alaskan mining game, Mr. Riggs. Oh, yes. Do you get up there much now? No, not much. I hope to hit Alaska someday. I'm taking engineering at the U. Do you? Straight? Mr. Riggs violently set his cup down on a table. Mrs. Riggs would later tell him that he'd put it down in the wrong place, but never mind. He leaned over milk and snarled, offer me a cigarette. I don't know if they smoke here, and I doesn't be the first to try. Say, boy, Alaska, I wish I was there now. Say, it beats all hell how good tea can taste in a tin cup and how wishy-washy it is in China. Boy, I don't know anything about you, but you look all right, and when you get ready to go to Alaska, you come to me and I'll see if I can't give you a chance to go up there, but don't ever come back. When the crowd began bubbling lay to move toward the door, and a bubble with them. Though Claire's note had sounded as though she was really a little lonely, at the tea she had said nothing to him except, so glad you came. Do you know Dolly Ransom? Dolly, this is my nice Mr. Daggett. Take him and make him happy. Dolly hadn't made him in the least happy. She had talked about tennis. She had with some detail described her remarkable luck at beating one Sally Saunders three sets. Now, milk was learning tennis. He was at the present period giving two hours a week to tennis, two to dancing, two to bridge. But he preferred cleaning oil wells to any of these toilsome accomplishments, and it must sadly be admitted that all the while he was making his face bright at Dolly, he was wondering what would happen if he interrupted Dolly's gurgling, galloping, giggling, multitudinousness by shouting, Oh, shut up. When it seemed safe to go, and he tried to look as though he too were oozing out to a crane symplex, Claire slipped beside him, soft as a shadow and whispered, Please don't go. I want to talk to you. Please. There was fluttering wistfulness in her voice, though instantly it was gone as she hastened to the door and was to be heard asserting that she did indeed love Seattle. Milk looked out into the hall. He studied a console with a curious black and white vase containing a single peacock feather, and a gold mirror shimmering against a gray wall. Lovely stuff. I like that mirror. Like a slew in the evening, but it isn't worth being a slave for. I'm not going to be a Mr. Riggs. Poor devil. He's more of a servant than any of these maids. Certainly I'm sorry for that poor fish. He'll have a chance to take his coat off and sit down and smoke when he's dead. The guests were gone. The gilsons upstairs. Claire came running, seized milk's sleeve, coaxed him to the Davenport in the drawing room, then sighed, rubbed her forehead and looked so tired that he could say nothing, but hope you haven't been overdoing. No, just talking too much. He got himself to say, Miss Ransom, the one that's nuts about tennis, she's darn nice. Is she? Yes, she's... What do you hear from your father? Oh, he's back at work. Trip doing good? Oh, a lot. Did he melt? Tell me about you. What are you doing? What are you studying? How do you live? Do you really cook your own meals? Do you begin to get your teeth into the engineering? Oh, do tell me everything. I want to know so much. But there isn't a lot to tell. Mostly I'm getting back into math, been out of touch with it. I find that I know more about motors than most of the fellows. That helps. And about living? Oh, I keep conservative. Did you know I'd sold my garage? Oh, I didn't. I didn't. He wondered why she said it with such stooping shame. But he went on mildly. Well, I got a pretty good price, but of course I don't want to take any chances on running short of coins, so I'm not splurging much. And he looked at his nails and whistled a bar or two and turned his head away and looked back with a shy. And I'm learning to play bridge and tennis and stuff. Oh, my dear. It was a cry of pain. She beat her hands for a moment before she murmured, When are we going to have our lessons in dancing and in making an impression on some specs like Dolly Ransom? I don't know, he parried. Then looking at her honestly he confessed, I don't believe we're ever going to. Claire, I can't do it. I'm no good for this tea game. You know how clumsy I was. I spilled some tea and I darned your tripped over some woman's dress and oh, I'm not afraid of them. Now that I get a good close look at this bunch they seem pretty much like other folks except maybe that one old dame says, Caught. But I can't do the manners stuff. I can't get myself to give enough thought to how you ought to hold a teacup. Oh, those things don't matter. They don't matter. Besides everyone likes you, only you're so terribly cautious that you never let them see the force and all that wonderful sweet dear goodness that's in you. And as for your manners, Heaven knows I'm an OPG Woodhouse valet but I'll teach you all I know. Claire, I appreciate it a lot but I'm not so darn sure I want to learn. I'm getting scared. I watched that bird named Riggs here today. He's a regular fellow or he was but now he's simply lost in the shuffle. I don't want to be one of the million ghosts in a city. Seattle is bad enough. It's so big I feel like a no-see-em in a Norway Pine Reserve but New York would be a whole lot worse. I don't want to be a Mr. Riggs. Yes, but I'm not a Mrs. Riggs. What do you... He did not finish asking her what she meant. She was in his arms. She was whispering, my heart is so lonely and the room was still. The low sun flooded the windows and the jam in the mirror in the hall but they did not heed. Did not see its gliding glory. Not till there was a sound of footsteps did she burst from his arms spring to a reflection in the glass of a picture and shame facedly murmured to him over her shoulder, my hair, it's a terrible giveaway. He had followed her. He stood with his arm circling her shoulder. She begged, no, please no, I'm frightened. Let's... look for something before you scamper home. Look, my dear, let's run away and explore the town and not come back till late evening. Yes, let's. They walked from Queen Anne Hill through the city to the docks. There was nothing in their excited, childish oh, see that. And there's a dandy car and ooh, that's a Minnesota license. Wonder who it is to confess that they had been so closely, so hungrily together. They swung along a high walk overlooking the city wharf. They saw a steamer loading rails and food for the government railroad in Alaska. They exclaimed over a nest of little tarry fishing boats. They watched men working late to unload Alaska salmon. They crossed the city to Jacktown and its writhing streets, its dark alleys, and stairways lost up the hillsides. They smiled at black-eyed children and found a Japanese restaurant with small fish and huge shrimps and roots soaked in a very fair and great of light medium motor oil. With milk for guide, Claire discovered a Christianity that was not of candles and shifting lights and insinuating music, nor of carpets and large pews and sound oratory, but of hobos blinking in rows and girls in gospel bonnets and little silver and crimson plaggards of Bible texts. They stopped on the corner of an IWW speaker to a magnificent negro who boomed in an operatic baritone that the day of judgment was coming on April 11, 1923 at 3 in the morning. In the streets of Jacktown in cheap motion picture theaters in hotels for transient workmen, she found life running swift and eager and many colored, and it seemed to her that back in the house of four posters and walls of subdued gray, pink cotton batting. Milts delight in every picturesque dark corner and the colloquial eloquence of the street orators stirred her, and when she saw a shop girl caress the hand of a slouching bow and threadbare brown, her own hand slipped into Milts and clung there. But they came shyly up to the gilsen hedge and when Milt chuckled, bully walk, let's do it again, she said only, oh yes, I did like it very much. She abruptly dropped his beautiful new-felt hat. He was clutching her arms demanding, can you like me, oh my God, Claire, I can't play it, love, I'm mad, I just live in you, you're my blood and soul. Can I become the kind of man you like? My dear, she was fiercely addressing, not him alone, but the Betzes and Cory's and Gilsen's and Jeff Sackston's. Don't you forget for one moment that all these people here, or Brooklyn either, that seem so aloof and amused are secretly just plain people with enamel on and you're to have the very best enamel if it's worthwhile. I'm not sure that it is. You're going to kiss me. No, please no, I don't, I don't understand this even now. Can't we be just plain mates a while yet? But I do like you. She fled. When she reached the hall, she found her eyelids wet. It was the next afternoon. Claire was curled on the embroidered linen contra-pain of her bed, thinking about chocolates in Brooklyn and driving through Yellowstone Park and corn fritters in satin petticoats versus crepe de chine and Mount Rainier and Milt and spiritualism and manicuring when Mrs. Gilsen prowled into her room and demanded, busy? So casually that Claire was suspicious. No, not very, something up. A nice party. Come down and meet an amusing man from Alaska. Claire took her time powdering her nose and and ambled downstairs and into the drawing room to find Jeff Saxton, Mr. Jeffrey Saxton who is the height of Brooklyn Heights standing by the fireplace smiling at her. End of Chapter 28 Chapter 29 of Free Air This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Free Air by Sinclair Lewis Chapter 28 Sinclair Lewis Chapter 29 The Enemy Love But at second glance, was it Jeff? This man was tanned to a thick, even brown in which his eyes were startlingly white. His hands were burned red. There was a scar across one of them and he was standing with them cockily at his hips all unlike the sleekly, noisily quiet Jeff of Brooklyn. He was in corduroy trousers with a flannel-colored flannel shirt. But his tranquilly commanding smile was Jeff's, and his lean grace and Jeff's familiar, amused voice greeted her paralyzed amazement with, Hello, part. Ain't I met you someplace in Montana? Well, where? In the... Just landed from Alaska, had to run up there from California. How are you, little princess? His hand was out to her, then both hands, beseechingly. Then she had it flat-head-leg. She stalked him cautiously and shook hands, much too heartily. She sought cover in the wing-chair and, much too cordially, she invited, Tell me all about it. He was watching her. Already his old pursuing determination, his steadied dignity, were beginning to frighten her. But he calmly dropped into a straight chair and obliged. It's really been quite a lively journey. Didn't know I could like roughing it so well but it was real roughing it, pretty much. Oh, not dangerous at all, but rather vigorous. I had to canoe up 300 miles of a shallow river with one end in guide, making a portage every 10 miles or so. And we got tipped over in the rapids now and then. The big chief almost got drowned once. And we camped at night in the original place where they invented mosquitoes. And one morning I shot a black bear just in time to keep him from eating my boots. Oh, she sighed in admiration and, oh, uneasily. Nothing had been said about it. Jeff was the last person in the world to spoil his triumph by commenting on it, but both of them knew that they had violently changed places. Then now it was she who was the limp indoor dweller and he who was the ready ranger, that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping dab in her sighing. How did you get that scar? That? Oh, nothing. Please tell me. Really and truly nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him. Quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the big chief who got rid of him. He cut you with a knife? Oh. She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. He tried to retreat, but he retained her hand glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? Please, she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled. She'd be on his lap, in his arms, lost, and he was holding it. He was, oh, he was too old for her, yes, and too paternal. But still life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, terrible. Yet all the time she wanted and stormily knew she wanted to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate, to run away with him hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair, she stammered, did you was Alaska interesting? He did not let her go this time. Easy cat like for all his dry gravity he sauntered after her and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case. Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it, as it happens they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps. Though of course an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems, but I've had certain training and I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip, see the mountains, old glorious mountains and funny half Russian towns and have some fishing, wandering, the really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through wasn't plucky, I'm a cry baby, she said like a bad contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said, tut and placidly catalogued her with you're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion picture tomboy, but essentially exquisite, I'm a grub. Very well then, you're a grub, so am I, and I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along. Claire, haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness. It's, I'm glad. She sprang up, beseeching, Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea, I must run up and powder my nose. Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child, dear, we've been ambling along and, no, you aren't a child anymore, you're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man but just a dusty office machine that's gone now. I've got the wilderness in my lungs, man and woman, my woman. That's all I'm going to say now, but oh my God, Claire, I do need you so. He drew her head to his shoulder and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. He needs me, but he bossed me. I'd be the cunning child wife even at fifty, she worried, and hang him. It's like his superiority of poor milk even at adventuring and to be such a confounded, modest Christian gentleman about it. You're so dreadfully managing, she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship Jeff's pride broke and he held her away from him while his lips were pathetic and he mourned. Why do you always try to hurt me? Oh my dear, I don't. Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do? I don't understand. If I have an idea for a party you think I'm managing. If I think things out deeply you say I'm dull. Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean what are you, a real woman or one of those flirts that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love. I'm not, honestly I'm not Jeff. It's you don't quite make me. It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you and respect you terribly, but I'm going to make you love me. His clutching fingers hurt her arm and somehow she was not angry but stirred. But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word love. I've just chatted about fjords or whatever they are, but one of these days no, I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days and take you on Jolly picnics, neither I didn't even do that. I'm he dropped her arm, needed his forehead with the heel of his palm. I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it. I can't. Please stay, Jeff. We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up right here as far as we can. He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea that afternoon. Claire saw how the gilsons and two girls who dropped in admired him. That was crazy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considered than Milt, and I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good. She agonized. End of Chapter 29. Chapter 30 of Free Air. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Free Air by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 30. The Virtuous Plotters. Mr. Jeffrey Saxton in Alaskan Tan and New York Evening Clothes and Piccadilly Poise was talking to the Eugene gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, she's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her, but I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather loose ends. Who is this dagget boy, some university student whom she seems to like? Well, since you speak of him, I hadn't meant to unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him? Jeff asked confidentially. Nothing, except that he's a young engineer and frightfully brave in all those uncomfortable virtues. And she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere and he saved her from a bear or was it a tramp? From something unnecessary at any rate. Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young dagget is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you? Not at all. He's silent and dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive. Then he's cleverer than I thought. Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable role, it seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middle West. He isn't an engineer at all. He's really a chauffeur or taxi driver or something. And he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road and somehow insinuated himself into their graces. Far from being silent and common place, he appears to have some strange kind of charm, which Jeff sighed, I don't understand it all. I simply don't understand it. I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered, one pinky Westlake or some such name. Positively a crook. He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle, hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this daggett was his partner that actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not sure that daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron ore when he's being careful he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance. Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at 35 he'll be dining in his shirt sleeves and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. You know what a dear quixotic soul she is. She fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him. And the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind, oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cashing lovers. Oh, grown Mrs. Gilson. And good Lord, lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy. And really, I'm not exaggerating, said Jeff enthusiastically. What are we going to do, demanded Mrs. Gilson, while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff. I'd like to, but I'm too old. They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested. I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Dagget hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity and get sick of him? We'll do it, thrilled Mrs. Gilson. We'll have him for everything from nine course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the icebox. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will. End of Chapter 30. Chapter 31 of Free Air. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Free Air by St. Clair Lewis. Chapter 31 The Kitchen Intimate. Milth had become used to the Gilson drawing room. He was no more uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators he had been convinced that to have created the room, the Gilson's must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable Davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst shaded piano lamp, and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing room, but the kitchen that dismayed him. In show and strong he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful parlors, but he had trusted his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small, smelly rooms of bare floors and provided with one oil cloth covered table, one stove, the front draft broken and propped up with the lid lifter, one covered with panes of tin pierced in rosettes and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hairdresser's booth. With awl, milk beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas range large as a hotel stove, a ceiling high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc top tables and a case of utensils like this, it frightened him. It made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilson's. The Vanderbilt's kitchen must be like this, and maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilson's and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Jeffery Saxton, he had first been panic shaken, then resolved. He'd let old iron-faced Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives the way he did at Flathead Lake. But he, Milt, would be on the job. He'd help get supper and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only, Jeff was a rude. He greeted Milt with ah, dagget, this is so nice. And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, let me get that, I'm kitchen broke, snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a whole furniture store full of different kinds of china. It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea wagon and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him and respectfully offered, I thought of you so often, dagget, on a recent little jaunt of mine, you'd have been helpful. Where was you suspiciously, wondering and waiting to see whether you could take cold ham in your fingers? Oh, in Alaska. In Alaska, Milt was dismayed. Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advised me about. He was humble and Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, what's that? I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub of electricity. Do you know what would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a 100 mile radius? Gee, I don't know. Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy then? Nope, I don't know anything about that either. Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious, but somehow he hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the guilt-sons had delightfully kicked each other under the table, that for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy, and she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. It doesn't matter really, but I didn't know. So you've started at the engineering school at the University of Washington. Saxon was purring. Have you met Gid Childers there, son of old Senator Childers, charming people? I've seen him. He has a stutz. No, his is the Mercer side, Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers. Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairsque approximation of clearing her throat, but Jeff ignored her, and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt. Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three engineering faculty at the office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Filgren? Oh, yes, hey, he's a wonder. Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. Yes, good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can. Milt choked on a thanks. And now that we're just the family here together, how goes the financial side? Can I give any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you can do a little work on the side? You can make quite a little money. So confoundedly affectionate and paternal. Milt said irritable, thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money. How pleasant Saxon's voice was smooth as marshmallow. You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton. Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxon's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast in Saxon's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder blades were damp. As Saxon turned from him and crooned to Claire, more ham, honey, Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas. Not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real boys dog at a Madison Square dog show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxon's game, but what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in the home. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated and thought with creased brows and brought out, uh, oh, oh, Milt, how much is gas selling at now? Milt left that charming and intimate supper party at nine. He said, got to work on my analytical geometry as though it was a lie. He threw good night at Saxon as though he hated his kind, good benefactor. And when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson, the best he could get out was thanks for inviting me. They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxon begged, oh, dagget, I was arguing with a chap. What color are Holstein Friesian cattle? Red? Black and white, Milt said eagerly. Mrs. Gilson giggled. He stood on the terrace, wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Clair Boltwood or any of her friends again, not ever. He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night opera season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy shop below his room demanding. Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman who wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger office, you ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to, gee, a nickel. Gee, thank you. Don't mind what Ma says, she's always kicking. On the telephone, he heard a voice in an agitated, Mil, meet me downtown at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater right away. Something I've got to tell you, I'll be in the lobby, hurry. When he bolted in, she was already in the lobby agitatedly looking over a frame of stills. She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out. They've invited you to the opera. I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me the tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tool. Beat them, beat them. Come to the opera and be awfully aloof and supercilious. You can, yes you can, and be sure where evening glows. Now, I've got to hurry, but don't disappoint me, I depend on you. Oh, say you will. I will. She was gone, whisking into the gills and limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty in a tremor of anger at the meddlers, but he had never worn evening clothes. He called it a dress suit, and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To melt and to Schoenstrom, to Bill McAulay, even to Professor Jones and the greasily prosperous Heini Raskookle, the dress suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom, even waiters wear dress suits. For one thing, there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leibzig House, Miss Anne Schwiegenblatt, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schwiegenblatt to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No, a dress suit was what the hero wore in the movies, and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cow puncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and he had chambers in a valet. You can tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city 15, 16,000. How could he get away with a dress suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low cut vest? And what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part them or roll them up when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one? He could hear ADT boys and loafers in front of the pool rooms whispering, look at the piker and the rented soup and fish, for of course he'd rent one, nobody bought them, except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him in Yipal Mall, Toggery shop and shoes, an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in and demanded fraternally. Say, old man, don't some of these gents furnishing stores have kinds of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress suits and Prince Albert's and everything? You bet, said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, you bet means rather, and yes, indeed. And on the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion. And you're a liar, but I can't afford to say so. The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as American beauty garments. Neat, naughty, knobby, new. The center pages faithfully cataloged the ties, shirts, cuff links, spats, boots, hats to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite morning. As he looked it over, Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart, he purchased a traditional haunted garment with a plate armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River. A white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish, waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping fever. The long shining counter, the trim red stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps, which cost twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want columns found the advertisement. Silverfarb, the society tailor, dressed suits to rent, snappiest in the city. Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silverfarb's dress suits, his establishment was aloft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the presence of J. L. and T. J. O'Riggins private detectives, the Zenith Spiritualist Church, messages by Reverend Lulu Paulhouse, the International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam, and Mademoiselle Laverie Sulphur Baths. The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Melt felt that he ought to fight somebody, but there being no one to fight, he banged along the floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silverfarb, the society tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, pressing and cleaning while you wait. He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light came from one window which was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, colorless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantel gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. Want to rent a dress suit? said Melt. I got just the thing for you. The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Melt's uncomfortable-framed flumbling. Fine, Mr. Fine! Melt studied the shiny-seemed, worn-button-hold limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good grudge-stink of gasoline. That's almost worn out, he growled. At this sacrilege, Mr. Silverfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Melt all over coldly. His red, but shining eyes hinted that Melt was a Claude hopper, a no-honest wearer of evening clothes. Melt felt humble, but he snapped, no good, once something with class. Well, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance. But if you say so, in the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silverfarb returned the paranoid dress suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He followed with a throaty triumph, and he brought back a rich, ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Melt with eyes that had become as soaky as the eyes of a dog in August's dust. Now that, you can't beat that, if you want class and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an elegant garment. Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes, Melt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat. Nope, nicks on the velvet, he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the elegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms and well, what do you want? What do you want? That's a $150 dress suit. That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan. Well, you can send it to Japan after a decent. Have you got it or shall I go someplace else? The tailor instantly became affectionate. How about a nice tuxedo he coat? Nope, it says here, let me see, oh yes, here it is. It says here in the book that for the theater with ladies should not wear dinner coat or so-called tuxedo, but oh, damn fellows would write books they don't know anything. Nothing, absolutely, they make it up. Huh, well, I'll guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better than any repairman. Well, say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you've got to leave me $10 deposit instead of five. Mr. Silverfarb quite cheerfully unlocked glass case behind the rack and ghostly dead. He brought out a suit that seemed to melt almost decent, and it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pure glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again, Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died into a doubting, heathen world maintained the true gospel of what do you want? It ain't stylish to have the dress suit too tight. All the gents is wearing them loose and graceful. But in the end, after Milt had gone far as the door, Mr. Silverfarb admitted that one dress coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally to get a complete view, clear out in the hall, he admitted with stirring delight that he looked pretty fair in the room. His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top coat and marched out of his room, theater bound, with the well fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, look at the hand-me-downs. His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels. The trousers cramped his waist, and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering, but he swaggered to the trolley rich and famous and very kind to the common people, till another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat and a white knitted scarf, and that he took out and examined a pair of white kid gloves. He'd forgotten the hat. He was wearing his gray felt. He could risk the gloves, but the hat, the stovepipe, and the charts said to wear one. He was ruined. He turned up the collar of his top coat and concealed his white tie, tried to hide each of his feet behind the other to cover up his pumps, sought to change his expression from that of a superior person in evening clothes to that of a decent fellow in honest regular clothes. Had the conductor or any of the passengers realized that he was a dub in a dress suit without the hat, once he thought that the real person in real evening clothes was looking at him. He turned his head and bore the probable insult in weak misery. Still for anything but thick suffering, he was dragged on toward the theater, the opera, the people in silk hats, toward Jeff Saxton and exposure. But his success in bullying the tailor had taught him that dressing wasn't really a hidden lure to be known only by initiates. That some day he too might understand the black and white magic of clothes. His bruised self-consciousness healed. I'll do something, he determined. He waited vacuously. The gilsen party was not in the lobby when he arrived. He tore off his topcoat. He draped it over his felt hat so that no one could be sure what sort of hat it shamefully concealed. That unveiling did expose him to the stare of everybody waiting in the lobby. He was convinced that the entire ticket buying queue was glumly resenting him. Peeping down at the unusual white glare of his shirt front he felt naked and decent. A nice kind of vest must make him out of old peak colors. He endured his martyrdom till his party arrived. The gilsens, Claire Jeff Saxton, and a glittering young woman whose name Milt thought was Mrs. Corey. And Saxton wasn't wearing a high hat. He wore a soft one and he didn't seem to care. Milt straightened up, followed them through the manifold dangers of the lobby down a perilous aisle up tilted scornful faces to a red narrow corridor. Winding stairs, a secret passage a mysterious dark closet and he walked out into a room with one side missing and on that side ten trillion people in a well and nine trillion of them staring at him and noticing that he'd rented his dress suit. Hot about the neck, he stumbled over one or two chairs and was permitted to rest in a foolish little guilt chair in the farthest corner. Once safe, he felt much better. Except that Jeff did put on white kid gloves, Milt couldn't see that they too looked so different. And neither of the two men in the next box wore gloves. Milt made sure of that comfort. He reveled in it. He looked at Claire and in her loyal smile found ease. He snarled, she trusts you. Forget you're a dub. Try to be human. Hang it. I'm no greener at the opera than old horse hair sofa there would be in a garage. There was something. What was it he was trying to remember? Oh yes, when he worked in the show and strong flower mill as engineer at 18 the owner had tried to torment him to get his goat Milt put it and Milt had found that one thing that would save him was to smile as though he knew more than he was telling. It did not he remembered make any difference whether or not the smile was real. If he merely looked the miller up and down and smiled cynically he was let alone. Why not Saxton was bending toward him and asking in honeyed respectfulness. Don't you think the new school in music audible pointillage one might call it mistakes cacophony for power Milt smiled paternally. Saxton waited for something more. He dug the nail of his right middle finger into his thumb looked thoughtful and attacked again. Which do you like better, the new Italian music or the orthodox German? Milt smiled like two uncles watching a clever baby and patronized Saxton with they both have their points. He saw that Claire was angry but that the gilsons and Mrs. Corey flap-eared gait mouth forward bending were very proud of their little Jeff. He saw that except for their clothes and self-conscious coiffures they were exactly like a cracker box loafers at Heine Rouse-Google's badgering a new boy in town. Saxton looked bad tempered then Mrs. Corey bustled with her face and yearned at Milt. Do tell me, what is the theme of the opera tonight? I rather forgotten. Milt ceased to smile while all of them regarded him with interest he said clearly I haven't got the slightest idea I don't know anything about music. Someday I hope I can get a clever girl like you to help me Mrs. Corey. It must be great to know all about these arts the way you do. I wish you'd explain that overture they call it, don't they? For some reason Mr. Gilson was snickering. Mrs. Corey, flushing Claire looking well pleased. Milt had tried to be insulting but had got lost in the intricacies of the insult. He felt that he'd better leave it in its apparently safe state and he leaned back and smiled again as though Mrs. Corey did not explain the overture. She hastily explained her second maid to Mrs. Gilson. The opera was Ilamore de Treire. Milt was bewildered. To him who had never seen an opera the convention that a girl could not hear a man who was bellowing ten feet away from her was absurd and he wished that the singers would do something beside making their arms swim. He discovered that by moving his chair forward he could get within the Claire. His hand slipped across, touched hers. She darted a startled backward glance. Her fingers closed tight about his, then restlessly snuggled inside his palm and Milt was lost in enchantment. Stately kings of blood-red cloaks and chrysoberals malevolent in crowns of ancient and massy gold, the quick dismaying roll of drums and the shadow of passing banners below a tower, a woman tall and misty veiled and pale with dreams, a world of spirit where the soul had power over unseen dominions, this he saw and heard and tasted in the music. What the actual plot was, or the technique of the singing he did not know, but it bore him beyond all reality saved the sweet, sure happiness of Claire's nestling hand. He held her fingers so firmly that he could feel the pulse beat in them. In the climbiness of his room, when the enchantment was gone, he said gravely, how much longer can I keep this up? Sooner or later I bust loose and smash little Jeff one in the snoot and he takes the count and I'm never allowed to see Claire again. Turn the rough neck out on his ear. I suppose I'm vulgar, I suppose that fellow Michael in youth's encounter wouldn't talk about snoots. I don't care, I'll. If I poke Saxton one, I'm not afraid of the kid love and my brains as good as theirs give it a chance. But oh, they're all against me and they bust the athletic union's wrestling rule that striking, kicking, gouging, hair pulling, butting, and strangling will not be allowed. How long can I go on being good nature? When do I break loose? Slowly, beneath the moral cuff of his dress shirt, Milt's fist closed in a brown, broad knuckled lump and came up in the gesture of a right to the jaw, but it came up only to the foot. The hand opened, climbed to Milt's face, rubbed his temples while he sighed. Nope, can't even do that, bigger game now. Used to be able to settle things with a punch, but I've got to be more, oh more diplomatic now. Oh Lord, how lonely I get for Bill McGowey. No, that isn't true, I couldn't stand Bill now. Claire took all that out of me. Where am I? Where am I? Why did I hit a car that takes up 36 by 6? End of chapter 31.